Currently, people join online meetings by means of meeting coordinates (such as a universal resource locator (URL) or a dial-in number) that are shared separately from the online meeting experience. To enable someone to join an online meeting, a meeting organizer shares meeting coordinates by, for example, issuing a meeting invitation providing the meeting coordinates, a meeting identifier, and a meeting password used by the invitee to be admitted to the meeting. To participate in the online meeting, a person opens a tool (like email) on their computing device to find the meeting coordinates (and other information) shared by the meeting organizer and then uses the information from the invitation to join the online meeting at the scheduled time.
If another person would like to join the online meeting, an invitation is sent to that person. In some cases, the meeting coordinates were never shared with some of the participants, either because of the way they were invited or because the meeting was set up ad hoc with no advance sharing of the online coordinates. An online meeting interface may have content which augments the experience even for people who are physically present at a meeting. It would be desirable to have a technique that allows a person to join an online meeting that is in progress without having to have a meeting invitation issued to them or having to spend time searching for the meeting invitation previously provided to them.